SPEAKER_00 0:04

What's up guys? Thanks for tuning into North Rock Church's Young Adult Service, The Gathering. Whether you're at home, at work, or on the road, we hope you find this message encouraging and helpful. If you're a young adult between the ages of 18 and 30 in the greater San Antonio area, we'd love for you to come check out the gathering. We meet on the first and third Tuesday of every month at 7 p.m. Be sure to follow us on our Instagram at NorthrockYA for more details and to stay up to date on all things young adults. Now let's take out our pens and our Bibles and let's get into the message.

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I was thinking about like what does it mean to be unshackled? I was thinking about all the things you can use to measure, like something like you can use a tape measure, it's a protractor. I don't know what it is, but I was going, what does being unshackled mean? Like I was thinking deeply, like, what does being unshackled really mean? And I rested upon this. It means breaking free of the things that are holding you back from having a spiritually abundant life. Everybody with me on that one? But not just the spiritually abundant life, it's the things that are holding you back from having an abundant life, like in all areas, in every area of your life. Because hear me on this. God wants you to have a joyous life. He wants you to have an abundant life. He wants you to have a prosperous life. He wants you to have success. Amen? He wants you to have a good life. And look, we say this a lot at North Rock. We hear pastors say, hey, God wants you to live a life full and abundant. Anybody ever hear him say that? But here's what happens to me. And I don't know if you're like me, but when I hear something repeated over and over and over, I get like, I want some proof of that, right? I hear you. I want to believe it. I want to believe that God wants me to live a prosperous life, but how do I know? Well, we're going to answer that question the way that Jesus always answered questions. So many times he answered, it is written. And we're going to go to the Bible when we need proof of this. So we're going to just jump right into scripture tonight. We want proof that God wants us to be happy, that he wants us to be abundant. So we're going to start with James 1, verses 17. It says, Every good work, every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like the shifting shadows. So what does that tell us? Two things. Number one is God wants to give us gifts. Number two is he does not change. He's been giving us gifts since the beginning. Okay, great. So we have that one. Let's go to the next one. Matthew 7, 11. Now, this is Jesus himself talking. Jesus says, if you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him? I'm gonna tell you, I understand most of you probably don't have kids in this room yet. I hope. A lot of you don't have kids. When you do, something changes, and you just want to give them gifts. It's actually really dangerous, dangerous financially. I have a four-year-old daughter named Scarlett, and every time we're in Target, right? She walked, yeah, you guys are, you guys probably used to do this to your parents. I did. Not with Barbies, it was Batman figures. But she she comes up to me with a Barbie every time. She's like, Daddy, what does she say? Not I want this Barbie. What does she say? I need this Barbie. I'm like, you have like 34 other Barbies. Do you really need another? She's like, but Daddy, this one has purple hair. This is like gonna complete my collection. I'm like, how do you know the word collection? You're four. But guess what? I want to give it to her. I just want the feeling. I want to see her smile. I want to give it just, oh, it makes me feel so good. You guys will experience this at some point, or maybe you already have, but it just, if I can do it, if I have the money in my pocket, I buy it for her because I want to give her gifts. Well, if I, a sinful human, want to give my kids gifts, how much more does our father in heaven want to give us good gifts? Right? So let's keep going. Psalms 84, 11, this is my favorite one that speaks to this. It says, For the Lord is a son and a shield. The Lord bestow bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless. So what does that tell us? The Lord wants to bestow favor on us, he wants to bestow honor on us. So these are just three of the scriptures. If you actually combine joy, blessing, goodness, peace, and abundant life, there's about 534 passages in the Bible of God wanting us to be blessed and to receive gifts and happiness. So it becomes abundantly clear that God wants to give us these gifts. Okay, so if we know God wants to have give us good things and he wants us to have happiness and joy, and by the way, when we're talking about joy, we're talking about true joy. Joy that lives here, not temporary satisfaction. Everybody hear me on that one. This is two different perspectives because this entire thought of being unshackled depends upon God's perspective of joy. And he wants us to have real lasting peace and joy. And we have to break free of the things that are holding us back. So let's get real. What's holding us back? I love, I love that it's called unshackled. It makes me feel like powerful, like I want to let go of something, like I'm in control of it. But can I tell you what we're breaking free from is sin. That's what we're breaking free from. Sin is what holds us back. Let's make no mistake about that. But when we are able to let go of our sin, it's then that God is able to pour these gifts on us in the form of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. And if you just think about the fruits love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Those are all symptoms of someone living a good life, right? And I know everyone loves the first three love, joy, peace, right? Everyone's like, oh yeah, love, joy, peace. I want that. That's so good. But kindness, goodness, gentleness are symptoms of someone that like you don't know a lot of people that are living like a terrible life that are real kind. Are you with me on that one? So these are all I'm still trying to get the Pastor Jonathan thing down. I'm bad at it. But the fruits of the Holy Spirit are what replaces our sin. It's what God gives us, and they're symptoms of having a good life. So God doesn't want to withhold good things. We know that now. But if I go back to one of those scriptures, I'll be very frank with you. It scares me a lot. Psalms 84, 11. Can we put that back up there or no? If not, it's okay. Psalms 84.11. I love the first part of that. God is my son, my shield. He bestows favor and honor. No good thing will he withhold. The last part scares me. From those whose walk is blameless. I read the individual went, ooh, because I don't know about you guys. Well, I do know about you guys. My walk's not blameless, your walk's not blameless. We're all fallen humans that sin every single day of our lives. So this scares me because I'm going, okay, can I only get these gifts if I'm blameless? But here's the good news. Literally, the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. See, this covenant, the nature of that promise in Psalms is appropriate under the old covenant because disobedience was punished and obedience was rewarded. That's how that system worked. And if you sinned, you needed to sacrifice an animal to pay your debt of sin to be made whole and blameless. Here's the really good news we have Jesus. Come on, somebody. We have Jesus, and He is through His goodness that we're made blameless. The believer actually receives God's good things through Jesus' goodness. And once we receive that, then the fruits of the Holy Spirit can begin to replace that sin and unshackle us from the things that are holding us back. So, what does that mean, right? What does that mean? Does it mean that we raise our hand in church one time when Pastor says if you want to give your life to Jesus, you raise your hand, you feel so good about it, and then like you're saved, and just blessings are raining down, and you're wearing like white linen pants and you're so spiritual now, and you're just, yeah, that's what that's how I imagine spiritual leaders are. I don't know, maybe I should have warned them. I don't know, I don't have any. But does that mean that just suddenly you have all these fruits of the spirit? No, that's not that's not how it works. The act of giving our life to Jesus and committing our life and turning it over to him is called salvation. And that's what we do when we turn our life over to Jesus and believe that he's our Lord and our Savior, and he's there to lead us. But it matters how we act, it matters how we act after that. Can I tell you something that I think that we fight sometimes? We love the salvation part, it's so good. Gosh, Jesus just got nailed to a cross, he nailed our sins to a cross because that's what happened. He paid our debt for us and he only had to do it one time, and we love that salvation part. But the next part is a little bit hard for us sometimes if we're just being honest, because it matters to God how we act once we've been saved. We're gonna go to Colossians 2, 6, and 7 because this one, it can be one that I wrestle with. Can I just be real, real honest with everybody for a second? I wrestle with this. Like I've been saved. When I was first saved, can I tell you? My friends were like, hey, you're saved. Let's go out drinking. Right? Let's go to all the places that we used to go because who cares? You've been saved. You're gonna wake up. You're telling us you have Jesus grace every morning, so let's go do whatever we want. And it was a hard thing for me to wrestle with. Colossians chapter 2, verses 6 and 7 was very helpful. It says, So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in Him. Rooted and built up in Him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. Leave that up there for just a second. So then, just as you received Christ Jesus, continue to live your lives in Him. So I want everyone to take themselves back. And and and if you're if you've been saved in this room, I want you to take yourself back to that moment. If you haven't given your life to Jesus, that's okay. We're so glad you're here. We're just so glad you're here, and you're you're gonna have the opportunity to do that here in a little while. But if you've been saved, I want you to take yourself back to that moment where you put your hand up or however that process worked for you. What was it like when you received Jesus? I'm gonna guess some of us were hopeless, but suddenly we had hope. We were a little excited, we were nervous, and in my mind, when I did, I was like, okay, Lord, this is it. Like, this is life changing for me. And I was excited. But the fact of the matter is, we all love that salvation process, the sanctification process that comes after. We're like, eh, I don't know if I want to do that. But we need to live in Jesus with the same excitement that we received him. That's what Colossians 2, 6 and 7 says. Those are Paul's words. So we're not supposed to take our turning of our life over to Jesus lightly. We need to live in him. So this is exactly what Jesus was talking about in John chapter 15 when he talked about living on the vine. Okay? In John chapter 15, um, where are we going? Verses 3 and 4? Verses do. Yep. You were already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. That means as he spoke to his disciples, they had been saved. Congratulations, they were going to heaven. But then he says, Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself, it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. So Jesus is telling us, we are not going to bear the fruit of the Holy Spirit unless we remain in him. But here's what happens to me when I read that. I go, okay, great. I want to remain in Jesus. And Jesus actually says, Remain in my love. But the question comes up, and I don't know if it's ever come up in your mind, how do I do that? Okay, I'm I'm in. I want to abide in Jesus. I want to live on the vine. How do I do that? Well, Jesus tells us pretty quickly. In verses 9 and 10, he says, As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Now remain in my love. Fantastic. That sounds so good. Just take a second. Man, we get to remain in his love. Isn't that wonderful? Gosh, just bask in Jesus' love. Is that how that works? We just get to kind of sit back and go, Jesus, I love your love. I'm gonna go to church. I'm gonna come to young adults, and I'm just gonna kind of like hang out with everybody and just live in your love, Jesus, right? But in verse 10, he says, How to live in his love? If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love. Just as I have kept my father's commands and remain in his love. Again, we love the sanctification, the obedience. Eh, we don't always like it. We don't like living under authority sometimes. We don't like turning, we say we want to turn our life over to Jesus, but do we have the love for him that causes us to want to bear the fruits of the Holy Spirit? Because if we really appreciate the stripes and the cross that we come in here and sing about, then we're gonna want to love him so much that he can give us those good gifts. That is how that works. That is how we start to unshackle ourselves. And and here's the hard part about it. If we're being very honest, and we can all be honest with each other in this room, hopefully, I think that we like think that God doesn't want us to have fun. The pastor says it on Sunday, but he he he he he he kind of like I want to talk, I just want to talk about it for a minute. I really want to talk about it. There's things that God tells us not to do that sound fun in the moment. You guys are nodding too much on that one, okay? That's kind of crazy. No, but it's true. It's true. There's things that he tells us to do, like put our neighbors first. Everyone, like, I don't know if I really want to do that. Like, I have things that I need, right? He tells us, don't have sex before marriage. Well, that doesn't sound very fun if you're looking at it through the wrong perspective and not an eternal perspective. If you're looking for immediate satisfaction, then this perspective is not gonna work. And it's gonna be very hard for you to remain in Jesus' love. Now, I want you to hear me real quick. This doesn't mean you suddenly lose your salvation. Because Jesus has so much grace for us, like we're gonna sin all the time, every day. Like it's just gonna happen. And his grace is new every morning. So you're not like suddenly not going to heaven, but it's harder to bear these fruits. You're not gonna be able to bear them unless you obey his commands. God says don't have drunkenness, like don't go out and and and and live in drunkenness, stay sober-minded. It can sound not fun in the moment if your friends want you to go out, right? He says a lot of things that if we're looking through that non-eternal perspective, sound like he doesn't want us to have fun. But I want you to just think about this for a second. The Bible tells us that that God wants us to be happy, and who is telling you that that immediate satisfaction is gonna be good? It's the enemy, it's Satan. It's the oldest trick in the book. Can I tell you this? Satan's kind of lame that way. He's used the same trick for thousands of years. His just like how he has said it has changed. In the Garden of Eden, it was a serpent. Now it's Instagram, same thing. And we're going, hey, did they really tell you at church not to have sex before marriage? It's gonna be fine. It's gonna feel great, it's gonna be good. But he doesn't want to tell you about how it's gonna feel when you're done. He doesn't want to tell you about the guilt that might come with it, the shame. And if that shame builds on it, and you don't come back and give that sin to the Lord and you build shame on top of that and you isolate, he's got you guys. And so we've got to avoid those things. If we're living in Christ's love and having him on the forefront of our mind, then we can start to unshackle ourselves. That question of how do we abide? How do we remain in him? It's really just as simple as that. It's just as simple as that. We must have, if you're taking notes, you can write this down. We must have a willingness to obey Jesus' commands. Doesn't mean we're gonna do it every time. He doesn't call us to be perfect, but we need a willingness to obey his commands. So tonight we're gonna talk about um what I think is actually one of the sneakier things that can shackle us, one of the sneakier sins. We're gonna talk about pride. Zeke always likes to give me the hard ones for whatever reason, and I and I like it. I'm ready to rock. So, pride, here's how I think of it. I think, like when I think of the sins that I wouldn't want to unshackle from, I I like when I just I usually have like four or five that kind of come before pride, right? I go, like, I got this temptation I'm working on, and gosh, like I need to lower my anger and be nicer and kinder and gentlemen, and all these things, and I go, and someday I'll work on the pride. But guys, pride is the exact opposite of what we've just been talking about. Pride is going, hey, I can do this myself. Yeah, you might have said you commit your life to Jesus, but do you really believe that he needs to live your life, or are you trying to lead it yourself? That's pride. And if you think you can lead it yourself, it's gonna go wrong. We cannot lead ourselves and abide in Jesus at the same time. If you're taking notes, we cannot lead ourselves and abide in Jesus at the same time. It doesn't work, it won't happen. So to me, pride is one of the more heavy, intense, and important sins to let go of. And we've gone through a lot. I think we've talked about fear in this series, right? And it's a big one. You gotta let go of your fear. Pastor tells us God is not the author of fear, the enemy is. We've talked about friendships. I'm sure we talked about letting go of the friendships, holding us back the relationships. I heard Pastor Matt and Jane got real wild up here, um, talking about relationships and how that needs to go. I think we've talked about legalism, and gosh, Jesus came and just wiped that out. I'm so glad you guys talk about the hard subjects. Man, I'm I love these subjects that you guys talk about, but I think pride's got to be up there if we're really gonna give our life all the way over and bear this fruit. God makes it like abundantly clear in the Bible how much He does not like our pride. There is, when I was researching, there's just I mean, like half the stories in the Bible are about God wanting the glory for what's going on. But I just chose one of the most obvious and easy ones I want to go into, and that's the story of Moses towards the end of his life. This takes place in Numbers 20. Uh we find the Israelites in the desert of Zinn, and they are out there, and there's no water. So they start complaining. This is not the first time they've complained, if you've ever read the Old Testament. It's just not the first time they've complained. Okay, these people were complaining all the time. This particular passage got me because it said they weren't speaking against the Lord, they were actually speaking against Moses. And so they're going, Moses, there's no water. Why'd you bring us out of Egypt, Moses? Which is ridiculous because the Bible says that their lives were made bitter with hard labor in Egypt. You want to put it more plainly? They were getting whipped, beaten, and working so hard that they were bleeding every day in Egypt. And they were complaining that Moses had now brought them into the desert. By the way, it was their own fault they were in the desert so long because they it we won't, that's another sermon. Okay. But I'm just imagining that Moses is sick of this. I mean, I'm just putting myself in the human, because I I think we have a tendency, like in Bible stories, to go, like, we just kind of think of them as like non-human sometimes. Put yourself in Moses' place. I'd I'd be I'm I'd be I'd be upset. That's the word. I won't say okay. I'd be upset. I'd be frustrated. I'd be so frustrated. So Moses actually starts this off right. Where this is where we're gonna pick up. Actually, before we go to that, Moses starts this correctly because he's so frustrated. The Bible says he, him and Aaron fell face down and asked the Lord for guidance and he gave him the solution. By the way, I just this isn't what we're talking about. But how many times do we have a real problem in our life? And if we would just pray and listen to God, he will give us a real tangible solution. That just happens all the time. That's not just Old Testament, that happens now, today, if you're listening for his voice. So God tells him, Yeah, no problem. Go to a rock, tap it a couple times, I'm gonna make water come out. No big deal, guys. It's great. Okay, great. So Moses goes and does it. This is where we're gonna pick up the story. Verses 9 and Numbers 20 says, So Moses took the staff from the Lord's presence just as he commanded him. He and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock, and Moses said to them, Listen, you rebels, and here's where things go wrong. Must we bring water out of the rock? Who had brought that water out of the rock? God had brought it. But Moses was so frustrated and so sick of it that he let his anger and his pride get in the way and took credit for something, for a miracle that God was performing. How many times do we go to God when we're desperate? I heard I heard Pastor talk about this a couple weeks ago. He's like, when you're desperate, don't we love to go to God when we're desperate? We got a big problem with, oh God, I'll just be on my knees. God, I'll be just in prayer and I'm willing to do whatever you say. But as soon as he solves the problem, we're like, dang, I did it. That's awesome. That's what Moses did. As soon as there was water, he was like, hey, thanks. They didn't even acknowledge that God was the one who had done it for him. And here's what happened. If you don't know this story, in verses 12 of Numbers 20. But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them. A promise that he had promised his ancestors way back. And Moses was this close. Guys, Moses had gone through this 40 years of wondering. I mean, they were on the edge of the land of Canaan. And the Lord did not let him in because he took the glory for himself. How important pride is. If you're taking notes, I want you to understand pride will keep us from our God-given purpose. Because Moses had to stand on that mountain and look over where he could have been, what he could have had, but he lost it because of his foolish human pride. That's how important this is to Jesus. So I'm thinking about this. Okay, so like God wants the glory. Um, God wants us to give him the glory, but we all have things in our life that make us proud, right? So this is a hard one. Like I wrestle with it because we have things in our life that we're probably proud of. Right? If you've got that great, if you like got a great job, it's easy to go, man, I got that job. I'm feeling good. Look at what I've done. But no, God gave you the work ethic and the intelligence to get that job. If you've gotten into the school that you want to get into, look at me, I got into school. No, God gave you the study habits and the attributes to go get into that school. If you've got that boyfriend or girlfriend, you're just so proud of them. My fiance's so good looking. The second time. But you didn't do anything. God gave you what attracted them. God gave you the attributes that help you find a partner. That's you, that's everything good in our life. It's something that God did for us. So how do we wrestle with how do we handle this? Because it's easy to wrestle with. I'll go back to Scarlet, my four-year-old, right? She's awesome. I'm so proud of her. But here's the thing she's not even mine. God gave that sound weird. What I meant was God gave her to us. Somebody call Ashley and just see if that's true. God gave us this gift. Oh, they just got the joke? Man, that took a minute. Okay. Y'all are a nice crew. I like you guys. Y'all, y'all just y'all go to the positive. I like y'all a lot. God gave us this gift of a child. She's not even our gift. He made her smart. He made her beautiful. He made her to love God. We're just taking care of her for a few years. So the things that we get proud of are not ours. Paul told us in 1 Corinthians, because here's here's what I do like, because I don't know about you. When something good happens, I like to brag a little bit. I like to brag a little bit. But Paul told us in 1 Corinthians. Because you can just kind of skip to the scripture. 1 Corinthians 1 31. Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord. So it is okay for us to boast about what we have and what we've done as long as we give God credit. Because I'm going to tell you, Jesus is the great leveler of our pride. When I was 25 years old, I I found a job where I started, I found some success in my life, and I went after money. And I and I made some money. And I went, dang, I'm good at this, right? It was a sales job. And oh man, look at my skills. I'm good at talking to people. I don't mind being up here and talking to a crowd. And like I started chasing the money, and here's what would happen is my money would go up, my money would go down. I'd peak in valley, peak and valley, peak and valley. And I found Ashley, and I thought that she wanted me to make a lot of money, my wife, and and we would go peaks and valleys all the time, all the time. And I remember one time we were sitting down, and she goes, How come every time that we get close to being successful, something falls apart? And what I realized later when I found Jesus is because we weren't using our God-given gifts for the right thing. And God had been preparing me for this to get to be here and talk to you guys today. All the things that I thought I was so good at, He just made me good, and I'm so blessed now to be able to talk about Him instead of money. I'm so blessed to be chasing Jesus instead of chasing after the wind that makes no difference. Jesus will level your pride. And I'm just gonna tell you, so many of you are in here. Um, I understand like pride is like any other sin, right? And by the way, I think I literally said, like, I'm proud of something today. I was like, gosh, I'm preaching on this tonight. This is a hard one. We wrestle with this all the time. But it can feel good in the moment, like any other sin. But the results that God will give you within yourself are completely different. So let's just kind of ask ourselves like, what skill do you have right now? What God-given gifts do you have that you should be boasting about because God gave them to you through Christ? What should you be doing with those skills? I know sometimes, because look, a lot of times this pride is just like your insecurity comes from misplaced pride. Can I tell you what I see when I look around? I see people hungry for Jesus in this room, but sometimes we won't put our hands in the air because we're worried that we're gonna be embarrassed. That's what I see. And that is insecurity, which is just misplaced pride. You might want to be running a small group. God might be going, you need to lead a small group, but you're like worried to start it because you're afraid no one's gonna sign up for it. And you'll be embarrassed. That's misplaced pride. That's misplaced pride. You might want to be inviting someone to Easter services. You literally might make the difference in someone's eternity, but your misplaced pride and insecurity is worried that they're gonna say no and you don't go make that invitation. What a thing. What a thing to lose. I'm gonna tell you. Even when you're doing the Lord's work, the enemy can get at you about this. Okay, I'm just gonna tell you guys a quick, quick story of what happened to me. This is three or four weeks ago. It was Saturday night, I just couldn't sleep for whatever reason. I don't know if you guys know, but here at North Rock, we have Tuesday morning prayer from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. Shameless plug. And we get to kind of sit down, sit at the feet of our Lord, listen to worship music, and then after about 30, 40 minutes, someone will do a little worship and someone will speak. So I'm laying there Saturday night and I just can't sleep. I can't sleep, and I've I just heard the Lord clearly go, Well, why don't you just write a Tuesday morning prayer? You're probably gonna be asked to do that again and receive that blessing. So I wrote it in my head, I practiced it like three or four times, I had it down, I went to sleep, and I was like, that was probably crazy. Like, why did I do that? The following Monday, there was a young lady that was supposed to do the Tuesday morning prayer talk, and Monday at about 11:30, she called and she said, Hey Jordan, I'm too sick to do that Tuesday morning prayer talk. Do you by chance have anything prepared? And I went, Wow, God is so glorious! Like He just dropped this on my heart, it's amazing. So I stood up here and did it, and I was looking in the crowd, and I'm always nervous when I'm up here, and at some point, like I looked around and there was all these people crying, and they were hearing what the Lord needed to give them that day. It was it was one of the most incredible experiences of my life because it had nothing to do with me. Like it was just like Holy Spirit talking directly. I hear people say that, I'm like, are they serious? Like, is that true? Guys, this is I I don't even remember most of what I said. Seriously. So I got off stage and people start going, oh, that was really good. Oh, that was a good talk. And I was like, Well, that was Jesus, Jesus, that was God, but it kept happening, right? And so by the end of the day, I was like, Well, I mean, I am the one who received the message, you know. You know, maybe it is me. Easy to get mixed up. So that's going on in my world. Well, here at North Rock, the following Wednesday and Thursday, we were gonna have this conference called Leading Second. And all these church leaders come from around the country, and we talk about how to grow ministry and just how to reach more hearts. It's amazing. Um, people from Elevation Church come and like talk, it's just it's an amazing conference. And at North Rock, we're blessed to serve. Like, we're on the rock star teams for that conference. So I knew I was gonna be on a rockstar team the day after, I just didn't know which one. They were gonna sign me Tuesday morning. So if I'm being real, I go home and I tell my wife, I'm like, you should have seen all the people crying. God spoke directly through me, baby, right? Like, she's like, That's so good. And she didn't mean to for being real. She was going, Oh, I know you're so good, honey, right? She's not even trying to be anyway, it's just what happened. So I wake up the next morning to get my assignment. I'm feeling pretty cocky, and the assignment on my phone says, This Wednesday for leading second, you will be the bathroom attendant, right? And I was like, Okay, I'll be humble. I get it, that's my fault, God. Let me tell you the one thing I did right in that situation. I wasn't mad that God did that to me. I understood that he needed to level my pride because I was getting out of control really fast. And the one thing I did right, hopefully I abided in him, because I was like the best bathroom attendant you've ever seen. I was spraying people with cologne. I was like making friends in the bathroom, which is another weird thing that I've said up here. Let me just tell you guys. The enemy can get at us anywhere, even if we're trying to do good works. We have to guard and we have to abide. That's why Jesus said we have to abide in him, we have to remain in his love. And to remain in his love, we have to obey his commands. If you take nothing else away from this, I just want you to understand that what we're doing here is serious. I love, I love that you guys gather. I love that. I wish I had something like this when I was your age. And I think a lot of you come here, hang out, it's a really good time. You're looking for a husband and wife, that's super cool. I like it. Good. It's really good party. Only four people want to admit that one. Okay, cool. Whatever. But can I just tell you this? I want you to gather here, but you need to understand that there's weight to what we're doing as well. Like, we don't just raise our hand and say that we're believers in Jesus. We need to follow Him. And your life is gonna go better. You're if you follow this command of morality, your marriage is gonna go better. If you guard against drunkenness, you are going to accomplish more things. If you just live in Him, you will be blessed and prosper. I'm not saying that bad things won't happen. What I'm saying is you'll have joy and success through the bad things. But here's the really good news. The really good news is that we're gonna mess this up pretty bad. We're gonna sit here and talk about being unshackled, and we we should all live in Jesus, but it's hard because you're gonna go, dang, like I want to be unshackled, I'm living in Jesus, and I just messed that up. Gosh, I just messed that up. And what do I do? I messed that up. I'm a sinner. Paul called himself the chief of sinners, which is like my favorite thing in the Bible. It's almost like a badge of pride. He's like, when I hear that, Zeke's laughing at me because I go, ah, I don't think I think I could match up with Paul. I haven't murdered a Christian, but uh, but I've done a lot of things. I've done a lot of things. Here's the beautiful thing: no matter what you do, if you just live in Jesus, his grace is made new every morning. You guys receive that Jesus gives you grace every single morning. And if you haven't given your life to Jesus, we're gonna say a prayer and we're gonna give you that opportunity in just a moment. But I'd like you to bow your heads and let's pray together. Father God, thank you so much for this group of young adults. It is so powerful having them in a room together, Father. It's so amazing to see them walking towards you. It lifts my heart up, Jesus. We we just love that you have put on their hearts and their minds to come here. We love that the Holy Spirit has been with us today, Father, and that you are guiding their life. We just want to say thank you. We want to say, please forgive us for our sins because we just we're not good enough, Father. We deserve death, but you give us life and we love you. If you've got your head bowed, let's just keep our head bowed and eyes closed. And if you're in this room today and you've never given your life to Jesus, if you've never committed to follow him and trust him as your Lord and Savior, you have that opportunity now. If you want to reach out and take that opportunity to give Jesus your life, would you just raise your hand, put your hand in the air with all heads bowed, all eyes closed. Just put your hand, yeah, put them up a little further, a little further so we can see them, see who we're praying for. That's beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. If that's you, you can put your hands down. If you've raised your hand, would love you to pray this prayer with us in your words or mine. Jesus, we give our life to you. We commit to follow you, Jesus. We know that we cannot guide ourselves, that we need you, Lord. We accept you as our Lord and our Savior. We know that you died on a cross in human form so that our debt of sin could be paid and we could have eternal life. We love you so much. We walk with you, we will abide in you. We love you, Jesus. And everybody said, Amen, amen. Would you guys give a big hand for those that just took that step of faith, greatest decision you will ever make? What a thing, what a thing.